Young Eagles

ARTICLES ABOUT YOUNG EAGLES BY DATE - PAGE 2

Displays of antique airplanes and rides offering "a taste of the sky" will be offered Saturday on Museum Campus Day at Meigs Field. The event, sponsored by Friends of Meigs Field, runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the downtown lakefront airport. Historical and educational exhibits will be on display in the terminal, and there will be free Young Eagles rides provided to children by the Experimental Aircraft Association and the Tuskegee Airmen.

Young people wanting to spread their wings can venture out to Lake in the Hills Airport Sunday for a free airplane ride. The Experimental Aircraft Association, Chapter 790 of Barrington, will host its first Young Eagle Day of the year at 9 a.m. at the airport, 8407 Pyott Rd. Children ages 8 to 17 who have not flown on a previous Young Eagles flight are welcome to a free plane ride. All passengers must bring a parent to sign their flight permission slip. The association started the Young Eagles program with the goal of taking a million young people for free airplane rides by 2003.

Swinging nimbly out of Jeff Hill's Cessna Skyhawk after his maiden plane ride, Nick LaBelle had some sage advice for other first-time fliers: "One thing I learned," the 11-year-old from Woodstock said, "never eat a taffy apple before getting in an airplane." Actually, Nick learned a lot more Saturday morning during the half-hour hop from Galt Airport to Crystal Lake and back. "Flying is fun, but it demands safety both on the ground and in the air," Hill stressed during his airborne commentary.

Gov. Jim Edgar arrived at Meigs Field Monday to a hero's welcome, sized roughly to the scale of the little lakefront airport. The airfield that almost became a park--and in the meantime became a controversy that turned into a compromise--was a working runway again Monday. And a small, but dedicated group of Meigs supporters turned out to offer applause and shouts of thanks as Edgar emerged from a state plane. "I am delighted to see Meigs reopened," the governor said. "There were times we didn't necessarily think we would get back here.

The Wynkoop-Sato family flew into Meigs Field from Cape Girardeau, Mo., on Sunday simply to burn the breathtaking aerial view of Chicago into their minds one final time. They would shop, of course, visit the museums and have dinner before beginning the 3 1/2-hour trip home. But the main reason the family of four came to Chicago in the rumbling Cessna 172 was to swoop past Lake Point Tower, over the Shedd Aquarium and onto the tiny lakefront airstrip before its expected demolition this week.

Speeding 150 m.p.h. into the middle of the sky above Chicago, 12-year-old Carl Mercherson felt his jitters melt quickly into wonderment. The 7th grader sat in the co-pilot seat of a single-engine sport plane Saturday, watching lakefront parks turn into lines, lines turn into dots and dots fade into the haze of the horizon. As the cars and skyscrapers and sailboats became smaller from the vantage of Carl's cockpit perch, the world of the soft-spoken South Sider grew slightly larger.

Holly Kalish took a trip from Wheeling to Great America this last weekend. But she did not wait in traffic or zoom upside down on rides. For a thrill better than any roller coaster, Holly, 13, soared high above the amusement park and across the northwest suburbs in a single-engine plane. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime ride and something I'll always remember," said Holly, who lives in Des Plaines. "I got to see lots of things from up there." Holly saw rooftops and football fields, matchbox-size cars, and lakes that looked like puddles.

It all fell apart for the Eagles in the second half last Sunday. It's not that things were going great before that, but the second half against Washington was awful. During the second half of their 41-14 loss to the Redskins, for the first time since the beginning of the summer, the Eagles were pushed around. It wasn`t just the mental breakdowns on defense, although there were plenty). It wasn`t just the dropped passes or the missed holes or the missed blocks, although there were plenty of them, too. It was physical domination.